American 'Scandals' Pile Up as Afghan Pullout Nears: (Die Zeit, Germany)
“It is striking that the scandals seem to be piling up the closer we get
to the date of withdrawal. This is in keeping with the adage: ‘There is nothing
more to win, so let us hit them one more time and let our hatred run wild.’ The
demon of war is once again celebrating a gruesome feast before time runs out.”
Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen: It seems as though the closer America gets to withdrawing, the more fires General Allen needs to put out.
The American Government has apologized to the Afghan people
- again. This time, because in 2010, U.S. troops desecrated the bodies of
Afghan suicide bombers. Photos of that incident have now been published
in the Los Angeles Times. Just a few weeks ago, a single U.S.
soldier committed a massacre in a village. He shot and killed 17 Afghans in
their sleep, nine of them children. Earlier, it also came to light that troops
urinated on the bodies of enemy combatants they had killed, and they did so on
video. On another occasion, soldiers at a military base in Kandahar burned
copies of the Quran, which led to weeks of violent rioting.
Granted, these are all the acts of individuals. U.S. Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta, given the most recent scandal, was right in saying:
"This is war. And I know that war is ugly and it's violent, and I know
that young people sometimes caught up in the moment make some very foolish
decisions."
But there remains the disturbing
fact the self-proclaimed liberators seem to be revealing more and more barbaric
traits. The question is: why?
Panetta addressed this. War is a brutalizing phenomenon. And
the longer a war lasts, the more this brutal it seems to become. American troops
have spent more than ten years in Afghanistan. They lead a war of attrition - one
they cannot win. At the same time, public support for the war at home has
fallen dramatically. Most soldiers no longer even know why they are there. This
undermines moral.
It is striking that the scandals seem to be piling up the
closer we get to the date of withdrawal. This is in keeping with the adage:
There’s nothing more to win, so let us hit them one more time and let our
hatred run wild. The demon of war is once again celebrating a gruesome feast before
time runs out.
Posted by Worldmeets.US
But the Americans - the West - still have an awful lot to
lose in Afghanistan. The 2014 agreed-upon date of withdrawal is the right thing
to do, but it is of the utmost interest to the West that Afghanistan remains an
ally after that date. Because Afghanistan is in a very geostrategically important region. It borders the
resource-rich states of Central Asia, it borders Iran and Pakistan, and it is
therefore also of vital importance to India.
The West is not going to win this war, but there is no need
to lose Afghanistan. The United States is now negotiating with the Afghan government
on the fate of U.S. military bases beyond 2014. Atrocities committed by U.S.
soldiers certainly won't facilitate these negotiations.
If there are more scandals of this magnitude or should their
frequency rise - and there is reason for such fear - then the worst could
happen. NATO would have to leave the country like the Soviet Army did in 1989:
hated and despised by all Afghans.
